SyFy Channel Loves Union Protesters, Hates Those Darn Company Owners

One of the biggest hit series on the science fiction cable channel SyFy is Warehouse 13, a show where federal agents traipse about the country recovering “artifacts” that have dangerous, other worldly powers. But on Monday’s episode, the show indulged a few real world, left-wing political tropes by slamming capitalism, praising unions and attacking southerners.

[Spoiler alert]

The plot of the show centered around the recovery of an “artifact” hidden somewhere in a West Virginia steel mill that is undergoing a union strike.

Naturally, as soon as the agents get to the steel mill, they are immediately suspicious of the steel mill’s owner and they interrogate him as if he is an obvious criminal just because, well, he is a business owner, after all. Naturally, the owner character is played as a dismissive, jerk. Because, well, he’s a business owner.

At one point the owner tells the agents that in this economy he’s hard pressed to keep the lights on to which one of the agents dismissively says, “Oh, get down off your cross we need the wood.”

As the episode continues, the union members are all presented as dedicated folks, interested only in what is best for “the workers.” Though the agents do cast temporary suspicion on the union’s shop steward — a suspicion that’s quickly dispelled — the owner is considered suspicious throughout the episode.

Naturally, the mill owner does turn out to be a bad guy (though not the bad guy). As the plot has it, the mill owner was caught abusing workers in the past and this time sabotaged his own machines at the mill to hurt his workers for “insurance money.” Naturally they don’t bother to explain how that would work.

And, maybe it’s just my natural conspiracy theorist stealing over me, but, gee, why do you think that they made a steel mill owner one of the bad guys? Did it maybe have something to do with the lefty narrative that Mitt Romney and his Bain Capitol killed a steel worker’s wife?

These jabs weren’t the only jabs at certain sectors of the country featured in this episode. Two of the show’s characters also attacked America’s great southland, specifically North Carolina.

One of the main characters, Steve Jinks, is a gay character. He is sent home for reasons I won’t try to go into here, but he’s unhappy to do so. As the story goes, he’s not on speaking terms with his mother.

As they arrive at his mom’s home, on the way to his mother’s front door the two characters discussed why he hasn’t gone home in years. “My mom and I had a fight,” he said. His partner then said, “what, about the gay thing?” He replied, “No, this is New Jersey not North Carolina.”

So, the message of Warehouse 13 seems to be that unions are good and business owners are sleazy bad guys that want to hurt people and people living in the south are mindless bigots and haters.

Warner Todd Huston

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago-based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com, BigJournalsim.com and all Breitbart News' other sites, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, and many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs across the country to discuss his opinion editorials and current events as well as appearing on TV networks such as CNN, Fox News, Fox Business Network, and various Chicago-based news programs.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the book "Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture" which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com.
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